Phil Stewart

I think it's really important here just to focus on what President Trump himself said were the goals of this campaign, which are extremely maximalist.

He says that the U.S.

is going to annihilate Iran's navy.

It's going to wipe out

It's missile industry.

It's going to prevent Iran from ever having a nuclear weapon.

It asks the Iranian people to rise up and take over its government.

I mean, these are words of a president who is looking to wage a major conflict against Iran.

And I think that everyone needs to sort of digest the idea that we're in uncharted waters right now.

It's hard to read that any other way than a goal of regime change, but one that doesn't explicitly, at least at this point, include the concept of US ground forces.

If there are US ground forces, we haven't seen them yet.

We're learning about strikes by air and by sea.

In the weeks running up to this, Reuters was first to report that the US military was preparing for a sustained campaign

against Iran if ordered to do so.

And at this point, we have multiple U.S.

officials telling Reuters that this campaign will last for multiple days.

And so we're not talking about something that we've seen before.

So the talks, you know, were inconclusive.

But just hours before this operation began, Oman's foreign minister had flown to Washington, D.C., and actually given an interview in which he had said that peace was within reach.

And so, obviously, the White House did not, you know, feel that was the case or decided to go ahead, regardless of that opinion by Oman.